Showing posts from category Africa.
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How Population Growth Is Straining the World’s Most Vital Resource
Turning Up the Water Pressure [Part One]
›January 18, 2011 // By Russell SticklorThis article by Russell Sticklor appeared originally in the Fall 2010 issue of the Izaak Walton League’s Outdoor America magazine.
For many Americans, India — home to more than 1.1 billion people — seems like a world away. Its staggering population growth in recent years might earn an occasional newspaper headline, but otherwise, the massive demographic shift taking place on our planet is out of sight, out of mind. Yet within 20 years, India is expected to eclipse China as the world’s most populous nation; by mid-century, it may be home to 1.6 billion people.
So what?
In a world that is increasingly connected by the forces of cultural, economic, and environmental globalization, the future of the United States is intertwined with that of India. Much of this shared fate stems from global resource scarcity. New population-driven demands for food and energy production will increase pressure on the world’s power-generating and agricultural capabilities. But for a crowded India, domestic scarcity of one key resource could destabilize the country in the decades to come: clean, fresh water.
Stepping Into a Water-Stressed Future
From Africa’s Nile Basin and the deserts of the Middle East to the arid reaches of northern China, water resources are being burdened as never before in human history. There may be more or less the same amount of water held in the earth’s atmosphere, oceans, surface waters, soils, and ice caps as there was 50 — or even 50 million — years ago, but demand on that finite supply is soaring.
Consider that since 1900, the world population has skyrocketed from one billion to the cusp of seven billion today, with mid-range projections placing the global total at roughly 9.5 billion by mid-century. And it only took 12 years to add the last billion.
Unlike the United States — which is a water-abundant country by global standards — India is growing weaker with each passing year in its ability to withstand drought or other water-related climate shocks. India’s water outlook is cause for alarm not just because of population growth but also because of climate change-induced shifts in the region’s water supply. Depletion of groundwater stocks in the country’s key agricultural breadbaskets has raised water worries even further. Water scarcity is not some abstract threat in India. As Ashok Jaitly, director of the water resources division at New Delhi’s Energy and Resources Institute, told me this past spring, “we are already in a crisis.”
How the country manages its water scarcity challenges over the coming decades will have repercussions on food prices, energy supplies, and security the world over — impacts that will be felt here in the United States. And India is not the only country wrestling with the intertwined challenges of population growth and water scarcity.
Transboundary Tensions
Several of the world’s most strategically important aquifers and river systems cross one or more major international boundaries. Disputes over dwindling surface- and groundwater supplies have remained local and have rarely boiled over into physical conflict thus far. But given the challenges faced by countries like India, small-scale water disputes may move beyond national borders before the end of this century.
Looming global water shortages, warns a recent World Economic Forum report, will “tear into various parts of the global economic system” and “start to emerge as a headline geopolitical issue” in the coming decades.
This has become a national security issue for the United States. Any country that cannot meet population-linked water demands runs the risk of becoming a failed state and potentially providing fertile ground for international terrorist networks. For that reason, the United States is keeping close track of how water relations evolve in countries like Yemen, Syria, Somalia, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. It is also one of the reasons water security is a key goal of U.S. development initiatives overseas. For instance, between 2007 and 2008, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) invested nearly $500 million across more than 70 countries to boost water efficiency, improve water treatment, and promote more sustainable water management.
More Mouths to Feed, Limited Land to Farm
Water is a critical component of industrial processes the world over — from manufacturing and mining to generating energy — and shapes the everyday lives of the people who rely on it for drinking, cooking, and cleaning. But the aspect of modern society most affected by decreasing water availability is food production. According to the United Nations, agriculture accounts for roughly 70 percent of total worldwide water usage.Global population growth translates into tens of millions of new mouths to feed with each passing year, straining the world’s ability to meet basic food needs. Given the finite amount of land on which crops can be productively and reliably grown and the constant pressure on farms to meet the needs of a growing population, the 20th and early 21st centuries have been marked by periodic regional food crises that were often induced by drought, poor stewardship of soil resources, or a combination of the two. As demographic change continues to rapidly unfold throughout much of Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, the ability of farmers and agribusinesses to keep pace with surging food demands will be continually challenged. Food shortages could very well emerge as a staple of 21st century life, particularly in the developing world.
Mirroring the growing burden on farmland will be a growing demand for water resources for agricultural use — and the outlook is not promising. According to a report from the International Water Management Institute in Sri Lanka, “Current estimates indicate that we will not have enough water to feed ourselves in 25 years’ time.”
As one of the world’s largest agricultural producers, the United States will be affected by this food crisis in multiple ways. Decreased food security abroad will increase demand for food products originating from American breadbaskets in California and the Midwest, possibly resulting in more intensive (and less sustainable) use of U.S. farmland. It may also drive up prices at the grocery store. Booming populations in east and south Asia could affect patterns of global food production, particularly if severe droughts spark downturns in food production in key Chinese or Indian agricultural centers. Such an outcome would push those countries to import huge quantities of grain and other food staples to avert widespread hunger — a move that would drive up food prices on the global market, possibly with little advance warning. Running out of arable land in the developing world could produce a similar outcome, Upmanu Lall, director of the Columbia Water Center at Columbia University, said via email.
Changing Tastes of the Developing World
Economic modernization and population growth in the developing world could affect global food production in other ways. In many developing countries, rising living standards are prompting changes in dietary preferences: More people are moving from traditional rice- and wheat-based diets to diets heavier in meat. Accommodating this shift at the global level results in greater demand on “virtual water” — the amount of water required to bring an agricultural or livestock product to market. According to the World Water Council, 264 gallons of water are needed to produce 2.2 pounds of wheat (370 gallons for 2.2 pounds rice), while producing an equivalent amount of beef requires a whopping 3,434 gallons of water.
In that way, the growing appeal of Western-style, meat-intensive diets for the developing world’s emerging middle classes may further strain global water resources. Frédéric Lasserre, a professor at Quebec’s Laval University who specializes in water issues, said in an interview about his book Eaux et Territories, that at the end of the day, it simply takes far more water to produce the food an average Westerner eats than it does to produce the traditional food staples of much of Africa or Asia.
Continue reading part two of “Turning Up the Water Pressure” here.
Sources: Columbia Water Center, ExploringGeopolitics.org, International Water Management Institute (Sri Lanka), Population Reference Bureau, The Energy and Resources Institute (India), United Nations, USAID, World Economic Forum, World Water Council.
Photo Credits: “Ganges By Nightfall,” courtesy of flickr user brianholsclaw, and “Traditional Harvest,” courtesy of flickr user psychogeographer. -
Integrated Development in PHE: Updates From Ethiopia and the Philippines
›“All protected areas in Ethiopia are being threatened by population pressure,” said Negash Teklu, executive director of PHE Ethiopia at an event at the Wilson Center co-sponsored by ECSP and the Africa Program. The best way to address this pressure is by implementing integrated population, health, and environment (PHE) programs that combine natural resource management with family planning services, said Teklu. “Without the family planning component, they cannot solve the protected area problems,” he said.
Teklu was joined by Joan Regina Castro, executive vice president at PATH Foundation Philippines, Inc., and Annie Wallace, PHE technical advisor with the USAID Global Health Fellows Program, to compare PHE projects in Ethiopia and the Philippines and identify best practices. [Video Below]
The Population-Climate Connection
To address population growth in areas of high biodiversity, Teklu created PHE Ethiopia, a consortium to coordinate PHE projects in the country and increase awareness of the value added by integrating them.
“The population-climate connection is easily seen in Ethiopia,” said Teklu. The country’s deforestation, loss of biodiversity, poverty, high maternal and child mortality, and vulnerability to climate change are linked to the rapid growth of its population, which is currently 85 million. Building community resilience in this kind of environment is “critical,” he said.
Bridging Gaps: Gender, Youth, and Religion
Wallace, in her assessment of the Packard Foundations’ PHE projects in Ethiopia, found the projects bridged gender gaps. By integrating health and environmental education in PHE youth groups and in outreach by extension workers, the projects increased male involvement in health and family planning (a traditionally female activity) and increased women’s involvement in agriculture and environmental activities (traditionally male). This cross-gender success increased the total number of family planning users, said Wallace.
But for any of this work to succeed, “community ownership and participation are very critical and essential,” said Teklu. Both youth and religious leaders were primary stakeholders in this process. “Youth are the next leaders. By targeting youth you can get them to think about livelihoods and make these connections,” said Wallace.
PHE has proven to “transcend religion,” said Castro. Despite traditional opposition to abortion and family planning, support from Christian and Islamic leaders in Ethiopia and the Philippines was critical in determining a project’s success. “When religious leader buy-in comes in, the community really responds to that,” said Wallace.
In addition, religious leaders understand the population-environment connection. “Our livelihoods are affected when we have too many mouths to feed…family planning and reproductive health makes sense,” an Ethiopian religious leader told Wallace.
Securing Sustainable Support for Scaling Up
IPOPCORM, the PHE initiative in the Philippines, is now “the biggest [PHE] project, modesty aside, in the world,” said Castro, because it has succeeded in working at all levels of government. To scale up its work in the “priority areas” of high biodiversity and rapid population growth, where the “poorest of the poor” live, IPOPCORM first scaled up its advocacy work. To be sustainable, “you have to have a lot of PHE leaders and champions” at all levels, from village to national government, she said.
Ethiopia faces a significant challenge in securing sustainable support and funding from the national government and other sources. “While there is buy-in for the local approach, there isn’t funding,” Wallace said. “A lot of work is donor-driven, whether we like it or not,” she added. “There needs to be a more sustainable strategy” to ensure the survival of these projects, she said, which means garnering national and international support.
But it also means conducting research to provide empirical evidence of PHE’s added value, the speakers agreed. A new paper in the journal Environmental Conservation, coauthored by Castro, uses evidence from IPOPCORM’s projects to conclude that integrating family planning and coastal resource management offers benefits over single-sector approaches. But elsewhere, there is a “big need for monitoring and evaluation” to “strongly gather data to show our success on the ground,” said Teklu.
However, communities on the ground “don’t need the empirical evidence,” said Castro. “The community and the people say their lives are linked and so the solutions should be linked,” she said. “The life that they live speaks of integration.”
Photo Credit: “Safia Fungie Hasenna – Climate witness from Ethiopia” by Zeresenay Berhane Mehar courtesy of flickr user Oxfam International -
New Insights Into the Population Growth Factor in Development
›“We have not found any country that has developed or gotten out of poverty while maintaining high birth rates,” said Martha Campbell, president of Venture Strategies for Health and Development. “Family planning is not a cost to a Ministry of Finance – it’s an investment,” said Malcolm Potts of the University of California Berkeley.
Campbell and Potts were joined by panelists Eliya Msiyaphazi Zulu, director and founder of the African Institute for Development Policy, and Jotham Musinguzi, director of the African Region at Partners in Population and Development, for a Wilson Center discussion of the implications of rapid population growth on human and economic development. [Video Below]
Africa’s Key Population Growth Challenges
“Africa’s population of one billion can reach between 1.8 and 2.3 billion by 2050, depending on how well the continent actually does in reducing fertility,” Zulu said. In 2010, Africa accounted for 15 percent of the total world population, but current estimates suggest this will grow to 23 percent by 2050.
“Rapid growth, young age structures, and urbanization are Africa’s main population challenges,” said Zulu. “Addressing these concerns is increasingly seen to be the key to the continent’s development prospects and realization of the Millennium Development Goals.” With 40 to 50 percent of populations in Africa under the age of 15, there is “high momentum for further population growth,” he said.
“Africa has a very high demand for fertility control, and the demand will undoubtedly increase,” said Zulu. “The main challenge, therefore, is not that of demand, but how to ensure those who are in need actually have access to contraception.” In many African regions, current rates of contraception use are as low as seven percent. In some areas, as many as 97 percent of women cannot afford the full cost of contraception, he said.
“It’s not just about reducing fertility,” said Zulu. Improving education and increasing labor force opportunities will not only help populations develop economically, but will also allow African countries to take full advantage of the demographic dividend, he said.
“The international development community should build on Africa’s success stories and support efforts to achieve universal access to family planning, expand public education on reproductive matters, improve the status of women, and improve the situation in urban settings,” Zulu concluded.
Family Planning and the MDGs
“Women are dying; children are dying. They shouldn’t be,” said Musinguzi. “By investing US$1 million in family planning, you can prevent 800 maternal deaths, 11,000 infant deaths, 14,000 deaths in children under five, and 360,000 unwanted pregnancies.”
“Women are clearly saying they have a need for family planning,” Musinguzi said. Presenting statistics from sub-Saharan Africa, he noted that 31 countries have a total fertility rate of more than five. Fourteen million unintended pregnancies occur each year, but only 25 percent of women use family planning. In Uganda, for example, the population has more than doubled in less than 20 years; women on average have more than six children each; and only 18 percent of married women use modern contraception.
“For a country trying to achieve the MDGs…the question of addressing total fertility rate is very important,” said Musinguzi. Reducing unmet need for family planning services can help African countries reduce the costs of achieving several of the Millennium Development Goals, including offering universal primary education; reducing child mortality; improving maternal health; combating HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases; and ensuring environmental sustainability.
Policy Implications
“This is an urgent message – waiting 10 years to get family planning back on the international agenda will be enormously costly,” Potts said. “Of all the medical interventions that exist, contraception is the single most powerful. It is the only one that can have an impact on maternal and infant mortality, on the autonomy of women, on economic progress, on social stability and the rate at which we destroy the environment,” he said.
“Education and family planning are the driving mechanisms of development – they’re synergistic,” said Potts. “One of our needs is to get economists, family planning, and development experts on the same page.”
Sources: Guttmacher Institute, Population Action International, Population Reference Bureau.
Photo Credit: Untitled, courtesy of flickr user stttijn. -
The Role of Population Dynamics in Climate Adaptation
›December 21, 2010 // By Wilson Center StaffThis post is a synthesis of a panel discussion at the UNFPA Population Dynamics and Climate Change conference in Mexico City with Marcia Castro, of the Harvard School of Public Health; Heather D’Agnes, of USAID; and Lori Hunter, of the University of Colorado at Boulder.
It is well-known that environmental change — including climate change — has important impacts on human health. However, it is less well understood how health systems shape the responses of individuals and households to environmental change. Population dynamics — such as fertility, migration, and mortality and morbidity — influence community health and greatly affect community resilience in the face of environmental changes, including the capacity to adapt to climate change.
Mortality and Morbidity
Morbidity and mortality dramatically shape a household’s ability to adapt its livelihood strategies to a changing climate. For example, in areas of high HIV prevalence, such as sub-Saharan Africa, adult mortality seriously undermines livelihood options. In the face of such loss, the household’s reliance on local natural resources intensifies. If environmental change reduces the amount of available resources, the household has fewer options for energy and sustenance.
Morbidity also affects adaptive capacity, and morbidity itself can be shaped by environmental change. For example, environmental scarcity can increase poverty, which can lead to an increase in risky transactional sex, further fueling the HIV pandemic. Malnutrition resulting from drought and environmental shocks can suppress the immune systems of HIV-positive people, making them more vulnerable to illness and less able to adapt to other external changes.
Fertility and Family Planning
Healthier households are more resilient households, so increasing access to health services, including reproductive health services, is essential for building adaptive capacity. High fertility poses challenges to a family’s livelihood and has negative health effects on women and children. Providing reproductive health services is an effective way to improve the capacity of these vulnerable groups to adapt to climate change. For example, a recent study argues that lowering fertility rates in the Himalayan region could increase community resilience to the predicted fluctuations in water quantity.
However, there is a high level of unmet demand for contraception across the globe. How can community adaptation programs help meet this need? Importantly, research from the Philippines suggests that integrating population, health, and environment programs in a package approach to community development is more effective than single-sector interventions. Including family planning and reproductive health services in community-based climate adaptation programs could not only more effectively meet the community’s needs, but could also improve its adaptive capacity better than health or climate programs alone.
Migration
Another population process, migration, can both impact health and affect the capacity for adaptation. For example, internal migration in the Brazilian Amazon appears associated with the spread of malaria, which negatively impacts the adaptive capacity of households. To mitigate climate change’s health impacts, states should more effectively plan settlements and health systems, including health impact assessments for infrastructure and development projects. (Editor’s Note – northern Nigeria and Niger present another example of similar climate-related migratory patterns that significantly impact health and economic resilience.)
In summary, the scientific evidence is clear that population dynamics — such as mortality, fertility, and migration — and environmental trends are linked. Projects intended to improve a community’s ability to adapt to a changing climate should consider and address these linkages in their design and implementation.
Sources: Foundation for Environmental Conservation, UNFPA, USAID.
Photo Credit: “Toureg family in Niger,” courtesy of flickr user ILRI. -
Rebuilding Stronger, Safer, Environmentally Sustainable Communities After Disasters
The GRRT Toolkit for Humanitarian Aid
›Natural disasters present an immediate humanitarian crisis but are also an opportunity to rebuild societies to be more resilient and environmentally sustainable than they were before. The “Green Recovery and Reconstruction Training Toolkit” (GRRT), created by World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the American Red Cross and launched at the Wilson Center on November 19, will help future humanitarian efforts integrate principles of environmental conservation into their disaster recovery strategies. This strategic partnership has been “an incredible effort and marriage between organizations that have different operating styles, different approaches to situations,” said WWF Chief Operating Officer Marcia Marsh. While implementing the GRRT may not be easy, “we need integrated solutions for integrated problems,” said Erika Clesceri, bureau environmental officer at USAID.
A Critical Partnership
In the midst of a crisis, humanitarian workers on the ground often do not have the time, skills, or funding to incorporate environmental concerns into relief efforts, said Robert Laprade, senior director for emergencies and humanitarian assistance at CARE. Humanitarian workers are “going a hundred miles an hour, they’re going on adrenaline and they’re there to save people’s lives – and the environment is just of secondary importance,” he said.
But “environmental sustainability is critical to the achievement of long-lasting recovery results,” said Roger Lowe, senior vice president of communications at American Red Cross. The Red Cross Principles of Conduct state that “relief aid must strive to reduce future vulnerabilities to disaster as well as meeting basic needs” and “avoid long-term beneficiary dependence upon external aid,” he said.
From Damnation, Purgatory, and Armageddon to Redemption
For many crisis-stricken regions, lack of an emphasis on environmental sustainability during disaster recovery efforts can mean “damnation in the present, purgatory in the near future, and Armageddon in the long term,” said Peter Walker, director of the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University. Stress on the environment caused by climate change or unsustainable resource consumption can often contribute to conflict, he explained.
In Darfur, “the environmental change was part and parcel of what led to that conflict,” Walker said. At one time an “environmental Eden” of diverse ecological zones, Darfur gradually became an environment that could not support a society of livestock herding. As the environment changed, some former herders became salaried, armed gunmen, known as the Janjaweed who felt they faced “a choice of no choice,” Walker said, to either “die as pastoralists or become pariahs as mercenaries.”
The challenge for humanitarian aid organizations is to not only help communities recover from disasters, but help them adapt to future environmental stress caused by globalization, climate change, or other factors. “If you cannot adapt,” Walker said, “that’s going to lead to violence.” To avoid aid dependency or resurgence in conflict it is critical to integrate environmental sustainability into disaster relief efforts from the beginning, he said:We used to believe that our world in the aid business was divided between relief on the left and long-term development on the right, and one would gradually go into the other in this relief-development continuum. But the reality is that you have a significant population – a population of millions of people – who are effectively trapped in a form of aid purgatory. They’re basically on a drip feed. Humanitarian assistance does not get you forward, it keeps you alive.
The GRRT offers organizations guidelines for implementing integrated disaster relief to provide a sustainable solution. While every crisis is different, the GRRT’s guidelines should be as applicable to “flooding in Boston as they are to flooding in Aceh,” said Walker.
Implementing Integrated Solutions
Securing funding for this integrated approach will be a challenge, as a significant portion will go towards staffing and training people on the ground, said Clesceri. A stand-alone, dedicated budget for environmental issues within humanitarian assistance programs must “be fought and re-fought for on a continual basis,” she said.
Local partnerships are essential. “Replicate” should be “stricken from the lexicon,” said Marsh. “You can’t replicate, and this toolkit isn’t meant to be a one-size-fits-all.” Instead, she said, the goal of the GRRT is to “create very practical approaches with communities.”
The key to helping communities recover from disasters is to form the kinds of strategic partnerships demonstrated by WWF and the American Red Cross in the creation of the GRRT. “Interdisciplinary groups are always, in my mind, going to get you a better solution in the end, but the risk is that they take more time…but it’s absolutely worth it,” she said.
Photo Credit: “Dark Clouds from Haiti’s Hurricane Tomas Loom over Camps,” courtesy of flickr user United Nations Photo. -
Whither the Demographic Arc of Instability?
›December 14, 2010 // By Richard CincottaAfter the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, the demand for geostrategic mapping went up. Pentagon geographers revised maps almost monthly in order to keep pace with the rapid sequence of events – the toppling of Eastern Europe’s communist regimes, the rise of pro-Western liberal democracies in their place, and the reunification of Germany. Then came more borders, and even more maps: the breakup of the Soviet Union and the withdrawal of forces from former Warsaw-Pact states, the splintering of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, and requests for accession to NATO. When, in the late 1990s, it became apparent that the end of the Cold War would have little effect on the emergence of civil and ethnic conflicts in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and that a network of militant Islamist organizations had coalesced across Muslim Asia and Africa, strategic mapmaking shifted focus to identifying conditions in the Global South.
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Empowering Women in the Muslim World
›December 2, 2010 // By Wilson Center StaffOriginally featured in the Wilson Center’s Centerpoint, November 2010.
For decades, women in the Middle East have actively struggled for equal status before the laws of their respective countries. They have strived to attain equal participation in politics and society, and progressive justice throughout the region. While they have made progress in some parts of the region, many challenges remain. The Wilson Center’s Middle East Program recently held three meetings to discuss challenges as well as progress to empowering women across the Muslim world.
A Modern Narrative
The American Islamic Congress (AIC) recently published a report, “A Modern Narrative for Muslim Women in the Middle East: Forging a New Future,” that highlights past and present triumphs and difficulties – economic, legal, political, religious, and social –for women’s rights throughout the region. On September 30, the Middle East Program co-sponsored a meeting with the AIC to review the status of women in Saudi Arabia and Jordan, based on findings in the AIC’s report.
Fawziah Al-Hani, manager of the Gherass Center for Social Education in Saudi Arabia, expressed frustration about the progress women have made in her native Saudi Arabia. She said women there are perceived as second-class citizens by the country’s legal, economic, political, religious, and social institutions. Women’s issues are rarely discussed in Saudi political and social spheres, and women are not represented in government or the business sector. She said if women are allowed to be active outside the home, they are mostly restricted to educational and health activities.
While she is frustrated about these restrictive Saudi policies toward women, Al-Hani said she maintains hope, as changes take place within the society and government through new initiatives and movements.
Rana Husseini, a human rights activist, author, and journalist, detailed the changes to the status of women in Jordan over the past 20 years. Husseini, whose human rights activities over the past two decades in Jordan have focused on honor crimes and other women’s issues, said Jordan has made substantial progress on women’s rights as a result of intense media and civil society activism. While there is room for improvement, she said women are now participating in government and significant reforms have been made to the judicial system.
Though the effectiveness of quotas for women in government may be debated, Husseini noted that quotas facilitate women’s participation in elections and government service. In fact, she said, there are some 50 women judges in Jordan. She noted that honor killings, except in extreme cases, are becoming rarer, and harsher sentences are being imposed for honor crimes.
With constant pressure on the government and society, reforms will continue, said Husseini, who is optimistic about the future for women rights in Jordan and in the Middle East as a whole.
Demographic Realities
Why do many Middle Eastern women not enjoy the same economic opportunities as women of other regions? Can they be empowered to participate at a greater level? Nadereh Chamlou, a senior adviser at the World Bank, attributed the gender inequality to restrictive social norms. She said the region’s women must be empowered to participate in a more significant way if their countries are to effectively exploit, instead of squander, the current economic “window of opportunity.”
At a September 13 discussion, Chamlou said the good demographic news is that there are high numbers of working-age people and thus the potential for rapid economic growth. However, Middle Eastern countries have the highest dependency rates in the world, a fact that Chamlou attributed to the low economic participation of Middle Eastern women relative to female citizens’ participation in other parts of the world. This reality means the Middle East’s demographic composition will not be exploited to its full potential.
Increasing economic opportunities for women will require changing social norms, said Chamlou. She cited a study conducted by the World Bank in three Middle Eastern capitals – Amman, Jordan; Cairo, Egypt; and Sana’a, Yemen – that revealed the biggest reason for the poor representation of women in the workforce is the negative male attitude regarding women working outside the home. Notably, social norms and such negative male attitudes proved to restrict women’s participation far more than the need to attend to child-rearing duties. Despite the successful efforts of most Middle Eastern states to improve education opportunities, conservative social norms still pose a barrier to female empowerment.
Some simple changes could have a substantial impact. Chamlou recommended focusing on educated, middle-class women, undertaking more efforts to bring married women into the workforce, and emphasizing changing attitudes – particularly among conservative younger men – toward women working outside the home.
Lessons from Tunisia
In Tunisia, the progress of women’s empowerment can serve as a model for the region, noted women’s rights advocate Nabiha Gueddana, president and director-general of the National Agency for Family and Population in Tunisia.
Speaking at a September 8 meeting, Gueddana said the Arab world can learn much from her native Tunisia regarding the positive effects of empowering women. Gueddana, also a candidate for undersecretary-general of UN Women at the United Nations, described how Tunisian women have been empowered politically, economically, and socially, and how this empowerment has benefited Tunisian society.
Tunisia has undergone substantial changes since achieving independence from France in 1956. Tunisian women had second-class status in the years prior, a time Gueddana described as one that relegated them to a life of constant child-rearing, illiteracy, and economic dependence.
Yet Tunisia has become a beacon for other Muslim societies: the country’s labor code allows full female participation in the economy and education is open equally to boys and girls. Family planning programs and important strides in health have considerably lowered the birth rate and lengthened the life expectancy of the average woman. Gueddana also noted that Tunisia’s economic growth is now five times greater than the growth rate of its population.
Measures to empower women in Tunisia have benefited not only women but Tunisian society as a whole, with significant shifts in men’s attitudes regarding women’s rights and roles in society. Gueddana indicated that her efforts extend beyond Tunisia, as she strives to help empower women throughout the world. She said such efforts will persist so long as women anywhere find themselves disadvantaged, dependent, and living as second-class citizens.
Women’s empowerment in society rests increasingly not in the political but in the economic and business domains (Editor’s note: one could add that women’s empowerment has the potential to considerably impact the environmental domain as well). While women have made considerable progress in the political arena, economic power is still male-dominated throughout the region.
Gueddana said the discussion of women’s rights should take place within the broader context of human rights. Violence against women, particularly sexual violence, is a widespread phenomenon across all societies and, unfortunately, often considered taboo for discussion. She said all citizens benefit when all have equal rights and can use them to expand their opportunities and achievements to enhance their societies.
Dana Steinberg is the editor of the Wilson Center’s Centerpoint.
Photo courtesy of Centerpoint. -
World AIDS Day 2010: Not Yet in a Position to Say “Mission Accomplished”
›December 1, 2010 // By Schuyler NullToday is World AIDS day. More than 33 million people are currently living with HIV around the world, according to the UN, and the vast majority of them (22 million) are located in sub-Saharan Africa.
“We have halted and begun to reverse the epidemic. Fewer people are becoming infected with HIV and fewer people are dying from AIDS,” said Executive Director Michel Sidibé in the 2010 edition of UNAIDS’ annual report.“However we are not yet in a position to say ‘mission accomplished.’ Growth in investment for the AIDS response has flattened for the first time in 2009. Demand is outstripping supply. Stigma, discrimination, and bad laws continue to place roadblocks for people living with HIV and people on the margins.”
Particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, “people on the margins” often means women and children. As a result, there has been more and more integration of HIV/AIDS programs with gender and maternal health. The environmental community has also worked closely with HIV/AIDS interventions in places where the destruction of natural resources makes certain populations more vulnerable than others and valuable conservation efforts are threatened.
As development efforts become more cross-sectoral, it’s important to keep in mind and maximize these connections between community, economic, and environmental health.
Check out The New Security Beat’s coverage of HIV/AIDS integration with other health and environment programs including coverage from the Global Health Initiative’s “Integrating HIV/AIDS and Maternal Health Services” event last year, a sit-down interview on the challenges facing HIV-positive adolescents with Harriet Birungi of the Population Council in Kenya, and an examination of how gender-based violence contributes to women’s vulnerability to HIV.
Sources: Population Reference Bureau, UN, World Wildlife Federation.
Map Credit: World AIDS Campaign.
